Historia de un Cazarratas (Relato)
thumb|400pxLight from the lantern hanging on Rolf’s ratting-pole glittered on the sluggish effluent, illuminating the darkened sewer tunnel with a weak, yellow glow. The brickwork was old and crumbling, the ledge following the course of the tunnel treacherous and pocked with holes to trip the unwary. More than one of Altdorf’s ratcatchers had found themselves up to their neck in the filth-scummed water of the sewers, but Rolf had walked these tunnels for longer than he cared to remember, and knew his way around in this twilight world better than he did the world above. Taking a long drag on his pipe, he let out a cloud of acrid smoke. Thoralf’s tobacco was foul, the best part of it sweepings from the floor of his barber-surgery, but it was cheap, and covered the worst of the sewer stench. The few copper coins he had left in his purse were for lodgings at one of the cleaner almshouses, and more expensive tobacco was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He spat a mouthful of phlegm into the water, pausing in his rounds as a coughing fit wracked his body. Mandred halted and turned to bark soundlessly at him, the small terrier impatient to get on with the business of catching rats. Thoralf had cut out the dog’s bark as a pup, for a ratcatching dog that barked and scared off its prey was no use to anyone. The dog was thin and its coat was bare where mange had taken great lumps of its hair, yet he was a fierce little tyke, with vicious jaws and the temperament of an angry goblin. "Part wolf, aren’t ya, lad?" said Rolf, receiving a wheezing growl in reply. Rolf wiped his mouth with the filthy sleeve of his threadbare jerkin, the animal traps and small caltrops hanging from his rope belt tinkling musically as he moved. He leaned on his rat-catching pole, the spiked collar on the end rusted and flaking. Four rats already hung from the nails securing the collar, and Godrun the Pieman would pay a copper for each pair. Another four and he could return to the surface. This night’s pickings were thin, which surprised him, for times were hard in the world above. And hard times for people meant good times for rats. Sickness was in the city, and Rolf had seen dozens of bodies lying in the gutters and rubbish-choked alleys being gnawed on by fat-bodied rats. The town fathers were anxious to stop the spread of this latest pox, but the money they were offering wasn’t as good as he could make selling rat corpses to the pieman. Rolf had heard of some ratcatchers who bred their own rats to cheat the burghers of small towns, but that seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Besides, Rolf actually enjoyed his work, preferring the solitude and quiet of the sewers to the bustle and noise of the world above. Recovered from his coughing fit, Rolf set off once more along the tunnel, keeping his eyes peeled for signs of a nearby rats’ nest. He had a feeling there was a big one nearby. He’d seen a number of tracks in the filth at the last junction, and the stench of rats, rank and wet and festering, was stronger in this direction. The walls dripped with moisture and a fat droplet landed on Rolf’s cheek. He reached up to wipe it away, surprised to see his finger was smeared with red. He sniffed his finger and his yellowed tongue tasted the unmistakable metallic tang of blood. He looked up and stepped back with a shocked gasp. Gripping the rung of a rusted ladder bolted to the tunnel’s curved wall was a human hand, severed at the wrist and weeping blood. "Sigmar’s oath!" he hissed, staring up at the stump of wrist. "How did that get there?" That was a good question, for it looked like the hand had been cut with a single blow. Had the hand’s owner been surprised while climbing down into the sewers or had he been fleeing to the surface when he had been attacked? Whatever the case, his grip on the ladder was fierce enough that not even death had broken it. The back of the hand bore peculiar ridges of angry red skin, marks that looked very much like a brand. Rolf held his lantern close to examine them. Three lines were branded onto the skin, forming a rough triangular shape, but he didn’t know what it signified. It certainly wasn’t a guild mark or a gang symbol. Beneath the brand, almost obscured, was a tattoo depicting a naked woman embracing a cannon. "Jakob?" said Rolf. "Jakob Klein of Nuln, is that you, you ol’ nenny?" There was no doubt about it. This hand belonged to another ratcatcher, a dour man from the south who’d come to Altdorf a few years back. A good ratter, but Rolf had heard he’d died of the plague last week. Apparently not… "That’s a strange one, and no mistake," he mused to Mandred, lowering the lantern and seeing that he stood in a sticky pool of coagulating blood. Drag marks showed that something heavy had been dragged from here. The blood was still wet and warm, so perhaps Jakob might be alive. Rolf hooked the lantern back onto his pole and set off down the tunnel, following the blood trail that led from the ladder. He’d gone barely a hundred yards, when Mandred stiffened, the terrier’s jaws pulled back over his teeth. Rolf eased the iron shutters of his lantern shut and squinted against the darkness. A soft green light was coming from just around the next bend and a number of jerking shadows were thrown out onto the glistening walls. Rolf was by no means a brave man, but a fellow ratter had been attacked. The brotherhood of ratcatchers was a fickle thing, but he hoped that if he were lying injured down here then someone might do the same for him. "Come on, Mandred," whispered Rolf. "Let’s see what’s going on, eh?" He reached down for his short-bladed skinning knife and crept toward the shadows. The shadows jerking on the wall moved further down the tunnel, and Rolf heard what sounded like muffled screaming, like someone trying to shout with a gag in their mouth. Rolf had lived in Altdorf long enough to know that sound. Had footpads set upon Ol’ Nenny? That seemed unlikely, as no-one in their right mind would think a ratcatcher had anything worth stealing. He moved gingerly down the tunnel, Mandred keeping pace with him and sniffing at the filthy ground with agitated snuffles. Rolf dropped to one knee and put his hand on Mandred’s collar as the shadows halted. Hugging the tunnel wall, Rolf eased forward to get a better look at his quarry. Two hooded figures in tattered, filthy robes struggled to drag a third figure behind them, moving with hurried, jerky motions. Hunched over, they talked in rapid, high-pitched chitters. One held a strange, orb-shaped lantern – the source of the green glow – while the other carried what looked like an elaborately embellished Hochland longrifle. After a rapid exchange of squeaks and hisses, they set off once again, and Rolf had to use every ounce of his considerable skill in moving silently to keep up as his pursuit took him deeper into the warren of tunnels. The strange orb-lantern bathed the tunnel in an oddly unsettling glow, the water throwing back strange reflections onto the wall. The rippling shapes seemed to form leering mouths, and Rolf made the sign of the hammer to ward off the evil eye. At last the shadows stopped, and Rolf pressed his back to the damp stonework. He heard the sound of an iron grating being opened, and the hooded figures dragged their prisoner into a smaller side tunnel. The light went with them, and Rolf let out a relieved breath. He waited for a while before unhooding his lantern, its warm glow reassuring in its normalcy. Moving along the tunnel towards the opened grate, Rolf lifted the lantern to the arch’s keystone, looking for the mason’s mark. He ran his fingers over the stone, feeling a circle with three vertical cuts in its bottom right segment, bisected by a horizontal cut with an arrowhead on the right. "Eastern tunnels, third circle, second quarter," whispered Rolf. "We’re under the grain houses of Unterzeit, Mandred." The terrier looked up at him, its back stiff and its hackles raised. Mandred had smelled rats and wanted to kill them. Rolf patted the mangy dog as he knelt before the grate and looked along its darkened length. Every instinct told him to turn back. He was alone in the sewers, armed only with a skinning knife and some caltrops. Not exactly a Reiksguard Knight or a shining hero like the ones in Detlef Sierck’s plays. For all that Rolf was a lowly ratcatcher, a man most quality folk would look down on, he prided himself on trying to do the right thing where he could. Not easy in a city like Altdorf, but a man did what he had to do to survive. He remembered Hansi, the ratcatcher from Wolfenburg who’d discovered that pleasure cult in the sewers under the docks some years ago. Hansi had brought Sergeant Mueller and twenty watchmen back with him, and they had dragged the screaming cultist to the surface, where they were strung up outside the Gallows Head tavern. Hansi had earned himself a couple of gold coins for his trouble and the prospect of some easy cash was a greater lure than the notion of a ratters’ fraternity. Rolf bent down and made his way along the tunnel, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of the unsettling green glow or anyone lying in wait. The base of the tunnel was slimy and an inch of stagnant, stinking water soaked his thin boots. He saw prints in the slime, elongated like a man’s bare foot, but with what looked like claws on the toes. Rolf was reminded of the farfetched tales of sewermen who claimed to have seen monsters in the tunnels; monsters with the faces of rats, but who walked like men. He put such nonsense from his mind as he saw faint light spilling into the tunnel. As he made his way to the source of the light, Rolf saw the brickwork ahead had collapsed inward; the base of the tunnel filled with crumbled mortar and bloodstained bricks. Rolf carefully eased his head around the hole in the tunnel, seeing a large chamber filled with workbenches and shadowed cages. There were things inside the cages, but the light was too dim to make out what they were. Animals? People? The workbenches were crowded with all manner of strange and hideous artefacts. Brass rods, drills, enormous shears, brightly coloured placards, swirling globes of greenish yellow fluids and jars of staring eyeballs. "What is this place?" he wondered aloud. "It’s a wizard’s laboratory or somesuch. I think we’re in over our heads, Mandred." Hearing its name, the terrier bounded into the room, circling the nearest cage and making wheezing, soundless barks as he bared his yellowed teeth. Rolf beckoned Mandred to return, but the dog was having none of it, silently growling at a lumpen shadow in the cage. Rolf saw the shape move, heavy and gradual like a slowly waking farm animal. As game as Mandred was, he wasn’t brave enough to squeeze through the bars to get at whatever was in the cage. "Damn it, Mandred, this is a job for the watch, not us!" hissed Rolf, ducking through the hole in the brickwork to fetch his dog. The air inside the chamber stank of burned meat and hot iron, a place of death and despair. Mandred scampered farther into the chamber, sniffing at the ground, which Rolf now saw was streaked and spattered with blood. An ill-fitting door of warped planks was wedged in a hole in the far wall, just beyond a wide slab-like table. Moving closer, Rolf saw it was caked with brownish stains and fitted with thick leather straps. It looked like a butcher’s block or barber surgeon’s table, but it was surely too large for that. Mandred circled the table with angry snarls, and Rolf took a moment to study the objects strewn across the workbenches. Numerous coloured bone cubes, decorated with strange symbols - hourglasses, skulls, comets and the like - were scattered alongside numerous sheets of paper covered in tightly-wound script. The longrifle lay on the bench too, its workings far more complex than any blackpowder weapon he had ever seen. "Come on, damn you," hissed Rolf, scooping up his dog. The terrier struggled in his grasp, but Rolf was in no mood to hang around this place of death. He turned and made his way back to the hole in the wall when he heard the creak of warped wood scraping on stone. He looked over his shoulder in terror as the door to the chamber began to open. The sound of the door opening was the single most terrifying thing Rolf had ever heard. Though he had no idea of the true function of this place, he had seen enough to know that no good could come of being caught here. Mandred still struggled to squirm out of his grip to get to the great butcher’s slab of a table, but Rolf held him fast by the rotted leather of his collar. The hole in the wall through which he had entered the chamber was too far away; he wouldn’t make it in time. Rolf looked for somewhere to hide, seeing plenty of shadowed areas of the chamber, but not liking any of them overmuch. Knowing he had seconds at best, Rolf ducked down behind the cluttered workbench, clamping one hand over Mandred’s jaws. The door creaked open and Rolf peeked over the edge of the workbench, curious despite himself, to know who would work in a place like this. The hunched figures he had followed here entered the chamber, robed in long hooded hassocks, such as a novice in the Church of Sigmar might wear, though these ones reeked as though they had been lifted from ten-day-dead corpses. The restless hands of the taller figure were laced together at its chest within the sleeves of its robes, clicking as though long nails or talons tapped impatiently on one another. The other figure carried a cloth-wrapped bundle, tied with twine, and dumped it on the blood-streaked slab before moving subserviently behind its master. Both figures began to converse in a chittering, squeaking language, and Rolf offered a silent prayer to Sigmar to deliver him from these fiends. The reek of them was vile, a mix of diseased animal and backed up sewer culvert, and Mandred struggled furiously in his grasp. The taller of the two figures slid his hands from his robes and Rolf saw they were bound in weeping bandages. Its fingers were sheathed in brass rods, clicking rings and whirring, spinning devices that looked like the tools of a watchmaker. A thin blade, like a barber-surgeon’s scalpel, extended from its fingertip and neatly sliced the twine securing the bundle on the slab. Rolf felt his gorge rise and stifled a gasp as the cloth fell away and he saw a monstrously muscled arm that was surely too large to have come from any man. The arm was covered in a coarse black fur and the meaty fingers ended in filth-encrusted talons that looked like they could disembowel an ox. The arm ended in a neatly sliced stump, a polished nub of bone protruding from the shoulder. The tall figure hunched over the arm as the scalpel withdrew and a number of clicking instruments like forceps extended from its fingertips. Horrified, Rolf’s grip on Mandred slackened and the little terrier broke free, bounding from their hiding place. Rolf tried to grab the dog, but it was too late. Mandred skidded from behind the workbench and rushed towards the figures, silently barking and snapping his jaws. Without thinking, Rolf rose to his feet, all thoughts of his own safety forgotten in his desire to save his dog. Mandred pounced at the nearest figure, the one that had carried the arm, and fastened his small jaws around its ankle. The hooded figure jumped, squeaking in surprise. It spun around at the sudden attack, and Rolf saw a tail protruding from beneath the figure’s robes, a vile pink tail with wiry bristles all along its length that was segmented like a worm. The figure spun around, trying to dislodge the furious dog. Its hood fell back over its shoulders, and Rolf was stopped in his tracks as surely as if he’d been punched in the gut. Its head was not that of a man, but that of a loathsome rat, its elongated snout and rotten teeth snapping in pain over its lower jaw. Its eyes were yellow and diseased, its fur mangy and discoloured. Like all ratcatchers, Rolf had heard the stories of giant rat-men in the sewers, but had never really believed them. Such talk was to scare newcomers and laugh at around a beer in the Gallows Head. But this was horribly real. He steadied himself on the workbench, feeling his legs sag in shock as the horror of these creatures threatened to overwhelm him. Mandred bit and clawed at the rat-thing, as the second figure looked up from its work. Rolf saw that beneath its hood, it too was verminkind. It wore what looked like brass-rimmed goggles that magnified its sickly yellow eyes, and seemed more irritated than angered by the sudden attack. The first rat-thing reached down and snatched Mandred from the ground, drawing a long dagger from its rope belt. Rolf’s paralysis was broken at the sight of his dog in danger. He reached for his skinning knife, but before he drew it he saw something much better. The elaborate longrifle still lay on the workbench amid the clutter of papers and bone cubes, and Rolf swept it up, bringing it to his shoulders, the way he’d seen Sergeant Mueller do when he’d been showing off his watch-house’s newest blunderbuss. The bone cubes fell to the floor, rattling around on the damp, bricks with a strangely unsettling sound. The rat-thing squealed and Rolf said, "Put my dog down or I’ll shoot you dead". His voice was surprisingly calm, despite his heart hammering in his chest. He’d never used a weapon like this, and didn’t even know if it was loaded. Was he even using it correctly and would anything happen if he pulled the trigger? He couldn’t think like that. He just wanted his dog and to get out of here alive. The rat-things regarded him curiously, and Rolf thought he saw a glitter of amusement in the eyes of the one wearing the goggles. The other held Mandred down on the butcher’s slab, its serrated knife blade an inch from the terrier’s neck. Rolf aimed the longrifle at the rat-thing holding Mandred. "I don’t know if you can understand me, but I’m a-tellin’ you if you don’t put that pig-sticker down, I’ll kill you, just see if I don’t". He took a step forward, feeling the bone cubes beneath his feet and glanced down. In his moment of inattention, the rat-thing with the goggles pounced over the butcher’s slab, faster and more agile than Rolf could ever have imagined. A long dagger glinted in its fist. It was fast, inhumanly fast, yet all Rolf had to do was squeeze. He pulled the trigger, and a blast of green light erupted from the weapon as the firing mechanism exploded in his face. Rolf screamed and fell to the floor, his face bathed in hissing emerald fire that slithered around his skin like liquid. The pain was incredible; yet even in his pain he saw the bone cubes lying in a scattered pile beside him. Each cube displayed the same image, like the luckiest roll a gambler could make. Though Rolf knew in his gut there was nothing lucky about the black, eight-pointed star showing on each cubes’ uppermost face. He felt rough hands on him as he was rolled onto his back. The leering rat-creature looked down at him, the yellow hate in its eyes magnified by the brass-rimmed goggles. "Yes, yes", it said, holding its knife at his throat. "Quick, quick. Man-thing shouldn’t be here. Man-thing not know how to shoot jezzail. Broke it. Bad, bad. Man-thing will die down here". It hauled him to his feet, surprisingly strong for something so hunched, and deposited him on the slab. "Not meat for swarms, no, no", it said, brandishing the scalpel and forceps that extended from its fingertips. "Man-thing’s flesh for experiments…" Rolf opened his eyes, sticky and gummed with tears, and let out a groan of pain. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was, then his eyes focused on the glistening arched roof of the chamber and he smelled the burned meat and spoiled blood smell of the butcher’s slab. Fractured memories of the last few hours came back to him and he rolled onto his side, retching and trying to shut out the horrors he hoped were only dreamed. He lay in the centre of an iron cage, still dressed in his ratcatcher’s rags and with his leg chained to the wall by an iron fetter. Mouldy straw covered the floor, much of it stained red with wet blood. He spat out a stream ropy phlegm to rid his mouth of a bilious, acrid taste and wondered why he was still alive. What did the rat-men want with him? They were gone for now, though, and that was enough. His face hurt where the green fire had burned him, and he reached up to touch his cheek. Rolf’s mouth stretched in a silent grimace of horror as he saw that his right arm was now muscular and covered with coarse dark hair. The arm moved at his command, the fingers flexing and turning with a thought, but it wasn’t his. Rolf looked over at the butcher’s slab, remembering the bundle the hunched rat-thing had brought in. He stared in horror at the arm, now seeing the terrible stitches and bronze hinges zigzagging across his shoulder where this grotesque limb had been attached. He tore at the stitches, but whoever had grafted this new limb to his body had done their work well – they were impervious to his feverishly scratching nails. Exhausted and horrified, he slumped against the bars of the cage, weeping at the horror of what had been done to him. The new arm was heavy and he could feel corruption within its blood. Rolf buried his head in the hand he could still call his own and wept, dreading the moment his captors would return and either kill him or visit further horrors on his body. Between choking sobs, a strange noise slowly began to penetrate Rolf’s misery, a series of wheezes, like an old man with lung rot coughing out his last breath. Rolf recognised that sound immediately and looked up to see a familiar little form crouched in a pile of brickwork beside the hole in the wall. "Mandred!" said Rolf; absurdly grateful to see his little terrier had escaped from the rat-men. The dog padded across the floor towards Rolf’s cage, sniffing the air suspiciously and keeping a wary eye on the door at the far end of the chamber. "It’s alright, lad, they’ve gone", said Rolf, holding his human arm out to the dog. Mandred squeezed between the bars, and Rolf stroked his mangy head, knowing he’d never been more grateful to see a friendly face than he was right now. Mandred yapped silently, his stump of tail wagging back and forth as he ran in circles before the bars of the cage. "I can’t fit through, lad", said Rolf, lifting his hideous new arm. "And I ain’t sure I’d be welcome on the surface no more. The Watch would like as not string me up as a mutant or get a witch hunter to burn me up. No, I ain’t going nowhere now". Rolf caught sight of something on the floor beyond the bars of his cage, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the bone cubes that had fallen on the floor as he’d grabbed the longrifle. A plan began to form in his mind and he pulled himself to the furthest extent of the fetter binding him to the wall. He reached out with his grotesque new arm, straining as far as he could, his clawed fingers scratching the stone floor in an attempt to flick the cubes closer to him. The longest claw caught the edge of one of the cubes and it fell onto its side, obscuring the black star and revealing a symbol shaped like a hammer. He caught it again and it hit a second cube, sending them both rolling towards him. Rolf scooped them up triumphantly and lay back against the bars. "I can’t get out of here, lad", said Rolf. "But you can". Rolf reached inside his jerkin, removing the pouch hidden in his jerkin beneath his armpit. He lifted out the contents of the pouch and placed the two cubes inside. He quickly tied the pouch to the collar around Mandred’s neck and patted the terrier fondly one last time before pushing him back through the bars of the cage. "Go, lad", he said. "Get back to the surface. Take these damn things to Sergeant Mueller, show him what’s down here and bring him back. Get him to burn these bastards out". Mandred gave one last silent bark and backed out of the cage. The dog simply stared at Rolf and wouldn’t move, no matter how he tried to shoo him away. "Go, you stupid mutt!" cried Rolf. "Get out of here before they come back!" Mandred sat down beside him, his head cocked to one side. Then the door at the back of the chamber opened with a creak of wood on stone and Mandred bared his teeth as the hooded figure with knives for fingers entered. This time the dog needed no encouragement, and bolted for the hole in the wall that led to the sewers. The rat-thing saw the dog and squealed in anger, moving quickly around the butcher’s slab with a host of blades clicking out from its hands. Mandred ran as fast as he could, but there was no way he was going to outrun the rat-thing. Rolf tossed what he’d taken from his hidden pouch through the bars of his cage and onto the ground, hoping against hope that his luck had changed. The three caltrops tinkled musically as they landed, the traps rolling upright with vicious spikes aimed upwards. The rat-thing stepped on the nearest caltrop and the rusty spike stabbed up into its foot. It fell to the ground with a squealing bray of pain, rolling on top of another caltrop, and its cries were music to Rolf’s ears. Mandred scampered through the hole and, with a last look back at him, disappeared into the tunnels. Rolf cheered as his dog made its escape, backing away from the bars as the rat-thing climbed to its feet. "You’re going to burn, freak", said Rolf. "My dog’ll bring the witch hunters down on you". The rat thing didn’t answer, simply drawing a wheel-lock pistol from its belt and aiming it at Rolf. Green smoke drifted from the firing pan, and Rolf just hoped the weapon would blow up in the rat-things hand. "Man-thing no use now", it said, and pulled the trigger. --------------- Rudi and Willi watched the small dog pull itself from the culvert that emptied the sewers into the river on the edge of the docks. The dog shook its patchy coat free of the scum and filth of the tunnels, before turning its face up to them. It wagged a stumpy tail and clambered up towards the quayside where the two muddy urchins sat. "Hey, boy", said Rudi, waving the dog over. "Come here". "What you doing, Rudi?" asked Willi. "I just want to see what its name is", said Rudi, ruffling the hair on Mandred’s head and looking at his collar. "Why?" "Just because". "Okay then", said Willi. "So what’s its name?" "I dunno", said Rudi. "Ain’t got no tag, just a little pouch or something". "Anything in it?" "Gimmie a second and I’ll tell ya", snapped Rudi. He loosened the pouch from around the dog’s neck and dropped a couple of bone cubes into his palm. "What’s them?" "I dunno", said Rudi. "Should we keep the little fella?" "What do you want with a dog, Rudi?" asked Willi. "We ain’t got enough to feed ourselves, let alone a mangy scrapper like this". "I know, but maybe he could catch rats for us, he looks like he’d be a good ratter". Willi looked doubtfully at the terrier, who squirmed in Rudi’s grip, knocking the bone cubes from his hand. They rattled on the stone of the quay, one landing with a hammer face up, the other a symbol that looked like an eagle, like Willi had seen on some Altdorf soldier’s uniform. "I got a better idea", said Willi, taking the dog from Rudi and pointing further down the street to where a fat man in a greasy apron stood hawking his wares, "That’s Godrun the Pieman, he’ll give us a couple of brass pennies for ‘im…" Fuente *Warhammer Fantasy JdR: Player's Guide (3ª Ed. Rol). Categoría:Relato Imperio Categoría:Relato Skaven Categoría:Pendiente de traducir